


dividing day

by ihopethatyouburn



Category: Homeland
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25948600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihopethatyouburn/pseuds/ihopethatyouburn
Summary: "I thought you hated Mom.""I thought you didn't."Carrie reflects on her relationship with her mother and the far-reaching effects on her own choices with Franny.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	dividing day

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to greenpen for the initial inspiration and encouragement! 
> 
> This came from my frustration at the dramatic potential of Carrie’s unexplored relationship with her mother and the writers’ decision to do… absolutely nothing with that, so here are some scenes that examine that dynamic more explicitly, featuring the events of 4.12 and 7.10 (plus some extra pre-canon stuff thrown in because that’s my idea of fun).
> 
> The title is the name of a song from the musical The Light in the Piazza by Adam Guettel, which, if anyone cares, is sung on the cast album by the actress who played Carrie's mother in 4.12.
> 
> Thank you for reading and leaving nice feedback, as always!

Summer 1995

Carrie wakes up hungover to her mother’s loud voice outside her bedroom. It’s the first day of summer between her sophomore and junior years of high school, and she’d really been counting on sleeping in. It takes her a few seconds to focus, her head pounding, but she slowly realizes that her mom isn’t talking to her; she’s on the phone, talking _about_ her.

“I have to decide how I’m going to punish your sister,” her mom continues, still half-yelling, still right outside Carrie’s door. Definitely on purpose. 

Carrie is in trouble, likely grounded for getting caught drunk late last night after her friend Melissa’s annual end-of-the-year party. She thought she was safe taking her water bottle full of vodka, the actual handle refilled with water and stuck back in the freezer, but apparently her mother has been keeping a closer watch on the liquor bottles than Carrie planned on. 

In Carrie’s defense, she wasn’t as wasted as she was the last time her mother caught her drunk, when she’d shattered her glass of water in the hallway and then thrown up (quietly, but not quietly enough) in the bathroom across the hall from her parents’ room. That time, there was actual blood drawn.

Last night, Carrie crept into the house an hour past her curfew in a way she thought was impressively sneaky, but her mom was waiting up for her in the living room, flipping fake-casually through the previous day’s newspaper. 

“Hi, Carrie,” her mom announced as soon as she turned the deadbolt on the front door.

Carrie jumped in surprise; she thought Ellen would be in bed, not sitting in the living room and looking at the clock as she walked in the door. 

“Hi, Mom,” she responded, trying not to seem guilty, bracing one arm against the wall to stop herself from swaying. “The party was fun! I’m really tired, so —”

Her mom cut her off in a falsely cheery tone. “You know what I found in the freezer earlier?” 

“No?” _Act natural, stick to short sentences, don’t give yourself away._

“I found our bottle of vodka almost entirely filled with water.”

“How do you know it was water?” Wrong answer. Oops. 

“Vodka doesn’t freeze solid. Water does.”

Fuck. She knew that from chemistry class, but wasn’t being careful enough. Her mom must have seen Carrie’s face fall because she grinned in the most infuriating self-satisfied way, like she’d been waiting for hours to trap Carrie into a confession. She probably had. 

“It’s really not that big of a deal,” Carrie started. “I didn’t even —”

Ellen was in rare form, not even letting Carrie finish her half-baked excuses. “Let me guess. You didn’t even drink it? You’re completely sober right now?” 

Carrie could see her reflection in the hall mirror, and even she’d admit that she looked wrecked, her eyeliner smudged underneath her left eye, her shirt grass-stained and dirty from laying on Melissa’s lawn to look at the stars. She nodded in what she knew wasn’t a convincing manner.

“So you can pass a sobriety test?”

“What? It’s not like you have a Breathalyzer.” The use of _Breathalyzer_ was a mistake; the word was too big for her impaired mouth and it came out all garbled, not exactly helping her case.

“I just want you to walk in a straight line.” 

“Mom, what the fuck?” Carrie whined. “I’m not doing that. I’m not a criminal.”

“Keep your voice down. You’re going to wake up your father.” 

Carrie rolled her eyes. “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I just want to go to sleep.” 

Her mother stared at her with an accusatory glare, clearly deciding if she wanted to prolong the argument or come up with a perfect punishment for tomorrow. 

“Fine,” she allowed. “I hope you feel horrible in the morning.” 

“Wow, what a supportive parent you are,” Carrie muttered as she stalked away towards the stairs. She got too caught up in the theatrics of her exit and tripped as she made her way upstairs, catching herself loudly on the landing with one hand, cementing all of Ellen’s suspicions. 

True to her mother’s wishes, Carrie does wake up with a massive hangover, Ellen’s voice outside her door only making her headache worse. She’s been drinking heavily for about the past six months, so they’re past the _it’s dangerous and illegal and I wish you could see that_ phase; now, when Carrie gets too drunk to hide it upon arriving home, there’s just a lot of yelling about her screwing up her future and ruining everything her parents have worked hard to give her. It doesn’t matter that she’s still in the top ten percent of her sophomore class, or that she’s almost fluent in French, or that she’s shaved two minutes off her 5k personal record in time for the town’s annual Fourth of July race. She’s just the fuck-up rebel daughter who doesn’t respect her mother. 

Her mom’s conversation with Maggie has progressed to logistical questions about Maggie’s summer job as a lab assistant for her immunology professor at Georgetown. Ellen is still standing in the hallway, though, so it must just be a way to punish her: wake her up and keep her awake. Carrie groans loudly and turns on her fan, hoping it’ll drown out her mother’s voice. It helps, but doesn’t do the trick entirely. 

Maggie calls her a couple hours later to debrief, while Carrie’s still in bed. “You know, this bad girl phase is getting really fucking annoying,” she starts off. 

“Wow, thanks for giving me such a compelling reason to stop drinking: your personal happiness.” 

“I don’t understand why you have to do it all the time. Just wait for college, like a normal person.”

“First of all, it’s not all the time, it’s some weekends. You definitely drink more than I do,” Carrie defends herself. “And second of all, I’m not hurting anyone. There’s nothing to do in this town, and this is how I have fun.”

“By playing drinking games in your friends’ basements? That’s your big idea of fun?”

“Uh, yeah. Sometimes we go to the park.” Carrie burrows deeper under her blankets, like maybe their weight will protect her from Maggie’s judgement. 

“So you’re picking fights with Mom and Dad just because you don’t feel like going to the movies like a normal teenager?”

“It’s usually just Mom. Dad stays out of the arguments, mostly.”

“Shocker,” Maggie breathes. 

“Anyway, like I said, you drink more often than I do.”

“Well, that’s because I’m three years older, and I’m responsible about it, and I’m not living in Mom and Dad’s house anymore. They don’t find me throwing up at two in the morning.”

“That only happened once!” 

“Carrie, seriously. What is with you? Mom won’t stop asking me how you started drinking.”

“Well, it’s a funny story!” Carrie shoots back. “I went to visit my sister at college, and she started pouring me tequila shots, and things just got out of control from there.”

“Don’t make this my fault,” Maggie warns, but she sounds more guilty than threatening. “Mom would kill me.”

“Mom would never kill you, because then I’d be her only daughter and that wouldn’t be fun for anyone. Can we just focus on me, who’s actually in trouble right now? Do we always have to talk about you?” 

“Fine, what do you want to talk about?”

“Why are you never on my side against Mom?”

“What? I’m always on your side. I never agree when she says you’re going down a dark and scary path.” Maggie does a mock-horror voice. 

“Still. You’re always lecturing me about everything I do wrong.”

“Well, I worry about you. I don’t want you to make dumb decisions.”

“You don’t want me to sully the Mathison name, you mean? Since you were so perfect all the time?” Carrie’s exhausted and nauseous and her hair is greasy. She’s not in the mood for Maggie’s high-and-mighty routine.

“You know that’s not it.”

“Yeah, okay,” Carrie accepts, a tiny apology. 

“I just worry that you’re engaging in too many risky behaviors. You’re being impulsive and mean and I don’t know what’s up with you.”

“Risky behaviors? Impulsivity? Did you by any chance take a psychology class last semester?” 

Maggie loved her abnormal psych class, and wouldn’t stop talking to Carrie about it for a solid month.

Maggie gets quiet. “Sometimes I see similarities between you and Dad, and it scares me.” 

“Of course there are similarities between me and Dad. I’ve lived with him for sixteen years.” 

She’s being deliberately obtuse, and Maggie doesn’t feel like playing along.

“I mean similarities between you right now and Dad when he has a manic episode.” 

Carrie’s heart stutters a bit and she focuses on the renewed rhythm to calm herself, her free hand clamped tightly over her chest. She feels a glimmer of recognition, but she pushes it down deep. She’s not the same as her dad. She’s never gone to his extremes.

“Never once have I suggested we get in the car and drive straight through to North Dakota to see some astronomy bullshit. Or tried to start a fistfight with the ref at your soccer game because he made a bad call,” she responds, her voice tight. 

“I know you haven’t. I’m not suggesting that you’re mentally ill. I just think you have to be careful because you inherited some dangerous personality traits.” 

“Is this what you were talking with Mom about for so long?”

“No,” Maggie insists. “I haven’t mentioned it to her at all.”

“You promise?”

“Yes. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s put it together already, even if it’s just in the back of her head.” 

“So what are you saying exactly?” Carrie groans. She needs more Advil, toast with extra butter, and a red Gatorade to deal with the rest of this conversation. 

“I’m saying that you should be careful.” 

“Okay!” she half-whines, petulant. 

“And I’m saying when Mom catches you drunk, I have to spend my morning talking her out of grounding you for an entire month.” 

“Mom really wanted me home for a whole month?” Ellen is an elementary school teacher, which means both she and Carrie have the summer off; Carrie can’t imagine her mom wants four weeks of her sulking around the house. 

“I think it was just an empty threat. But a couple weeks, for sure. She really hates your new friends.”

“My friends are nice. She’s barely met them!” 

“Your friends are idiots, who keep taking you up on your suggestions to play chicken with the fucking Metro.” 

Carrie deeply regrets telling Maggie about those particular drunken adventures. “Mom doesn’t know about that, though. Does she?” 

“No, I would never say anything. I have some loyalty.” Maggie sounds hurt. 

“Good. Now, I think we’re officially done discussing me. What’s new with you in DC?”

Maggie chatters on about her research partner, who constantly ruins their gene samples with his non-sterile technique, and her annoying roommate in the apartment she’s subletting for the summer, who never says two words to Maggie but manages to wake her up every morning at 4am upon arriving home from her job as a bartender by GW.

Carrie listens intently, asking unnecessary additional questions so she can prolong the moment where she has to leave her room and face her mother’s wrath. 

+++++

Summer 2001

Carrie tries to find a comfortable position in the hard plastic chair next to Maggie’s hospital bed, watching as the nice-but-perky nurse wheels newborn Ruby out of the room towards the nursery. She’d assumed the labor and delivery wing of a hospital would spring for better chairs for the inevitable many visitors, but apparently not. She just did all the requisite holding and cooing and promising that she’s going to spoil her niece rotten, all the while only sort of understanding the reality of what was happening.

“I can’t believe you have a baby now,” Carrie whispers.

“Me either,” Maggie agrees, exhausted. 

Maggie has always been the more mature of the two of them, and has always acted older than her age, but Carrie still thinks she’s too young to be a mother at only twenty-five. Maggie is going into her final year of med school at UPenn, and she’d brushed off Carrie’s and their father’s concerns about her workload plus an infant with assurances that lots of people in her class have kids; Bill’s mother is going to stay with them for the first few months to help out, and she’ll be fine. She’s taking three credits short of a full course load come September, with a plan to make them up in the spring, confusing and unnecessarily detailed in Carrie’s mind, but it helps Maggie move forward. 

“Where’s Bill?” Carrie asks.

“He went to go get me a burger. From that Irish pub his friends introduced us to, with the good crispy fries.”

“He’s getting you a takeout burger? Won’t it get cold?” Carrie wrinkles her nose in displeasure. 

Maggie turns to glare at her with more venom than she’s ever seen. “I swear to God, Carrie, if you ruin this meal for me I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you.” 

Carrie raises her hands in surrender. Apparently, postpartum hormones are no joke. 

They sit quietly for a moment, listening to the other new parents walking the halls.

“It’s nice that Bill’s mom offered to help out so much with Ruby,” Carrie says.

“It is. We wouldn’t be able to do it without her,” Maggie agrees. “Now, can you help me stand up? I have to pee.”

“You really can’t stand up by yourself?”

“I’m going to remember that after you give birth, and I’m going to taunt you endlessly for it.”

“That’s not going to be for a very long time, so I think you’ll forget by then.” Carrie’s good with kids, and she wants kids of her own someday, but the reality of that — the tiny socks and car seats and burp cloths she’s seen scattered around Maggie’s Philly apartment — feels incredibly far away.

She pulls Maggie to her feet, who had sunk into her mountain of pillows, and holds her arm during the ten-foot walk to the private bathroom. 

“I can’t believe you have a baby now,” she repeats, still trying to wrap her head around it.

“I sure believe it,” Maggie mutters. 

After Maggie shuffles back to the bed, climbing gingerly back onto the mattress, Carrie can tell her mood has changed. Her face is darker, sadder.

“What happened in the bathroom?” Carrie jokes.

“It was horrifying, actually,” Maggie says in a matter-of-fact tone, like the doctor-in-training she is. “A lot of blood.” 

After a moment, she reveals what she’s really thinking about. “It’s weird that moms aren’t expected to be in the delivery room with the person giving birth, just husbands.”

Carrie digs her nails into her palm, trying to hide all the nervous energy that’s suddenly percolating inside her. “You mean, the grandmother?” she clarifies, trying to prolong the inevitable. 

“Yeah. There’s more of a connection that way. The circle of life, and all that bullshit.” 

“I don’t think that matters at all,” Carrie argues weakly. 

“Mom should have been there with me.” Maggie’s voice wavers. 

“She couldn’t just divine that you were pregnant.”

Maggie glares at her again, but it’s not as withering with the tears that are threatening to run down her face. 

“Fine, I wish we lived in an alternate universe where our mother didn’t fucking abandon us. Then she’d have known I was pregnant, and she’d have been there to say encouraging things to me while I was pushing my daughter out of my body, like a zoo animal.” 

Carrie is at a loss. She honestly hasn’t thought about their mother much in months. They’re coming up on the four-year anniversary of Ellen leaving — conveniently memorialized in Carrie’s head as the day she left for college — but lately, for Carrie, Ellen has started to take on the same role as an old childhood friend. She has some happy memories, and deep longing for a lost time, but only when she’s reminded of it. Mostly, she gets through life without her mother. 

When she got the job offer this spring to join the CIA, she went through her normal call roster (pared down to account for the clandestine nature of the offer): her dad, Maggie, the two friends from high school she still kept in close contact with. She didn’t think about her mom until a few days later, when a professor who thought she’d be working at the state department said something about her parents being so proud, parents, plural. By that point, she was used to people assuming she had two parents waiting for her at home, so she registered the misstep on a surface level only, like when acquaintances called her Caroline by accident. 

Carrie was furious at her mother at first, felt hurt and betrayed and confused, but with time, she mellowed out a bit. Especially after her own bipolar diagnosis, she started to understand how much quiet maintenance Ellen had done for Frank while she and Maggie were growing up, the daily monitoring of moods and pills and calming routines when he couldn’t or wouldn’t do it himself. If Carrie had a chance to run away from her mental illness permanently, she’d probably take it. That realization doesn’t make Carrie feel more friendly towards her mother, but now there’s a sense of resignation, of eventuality. 

Carrie’s pretty sure the last time she and her sister discussed Ellen was when Maggie called right before winter finals week to share that she was pregnant, due in July. Carrie knew Maggie and Bill were trying to have kids, but didn’t think it’d happen so fast; she’d doubted that Maggie’s obsessive planning could extend to her fertility. But she got pregnant after only a few months of trying, of course, and there Carrie was, stuck on the phone when she really should have been in the library writing a paper for her Arabic Media seminar. 

Carrie was excited to hear Maggie’s news, of course, but it all seemed so foreign to her in her tight college bubble.

“Do you feel different?” Carrie asked in both horror and awe, feeling like a child again. 

“Right now, I feel scared,” Maggie admitted. “Excited and scared. I wonder if this is how Mom felt when she first got pregnant.”

“You could always ask Dad if he remembers.” 

“It wouldn’t be the same.”

“Whatever he can tell you will be better than nothing.” The two sisters did this periodically, urging the other to talk to their dad about old memories while rarely doing it themselves.

“I’m sure if Mom knew you were having a baby, she’d be here,” Carrie tries to soothe Maggie now, grasping at straws as Maggie tries to find a comfortable position on the bed. 

“You don’t know that,” Maggie snaps, inconsolable. “You don’t even think that yourself.”

“I was just trying to make you feel better.” 

“You said once that Mom is probably happier now, without us.”

“Without the mentally ill contingent of the Mathison family, I meant. Mom always liked you the best, I know she’d be thrilled for you.”

“Can you stop with the competitive bullshit you always start about Mom? She did not have it out for you and I don’t know why you always insist that’s true.”

“I was just trying to help,” Carrie defends herself. 

“Well, it’s not helpful if you just lie to me.”

“I’m not lying! I’m telling you what I think, based on my experience with Mom. Especially after you left for college,” Carrie reminds Maggie.

“She left all of us, Carrie, not just you and Dad. She hasn’t tried to contact us once. She doesn’t even know I’m in med school, or that I got married.” 

“Or that I’m going to be in the CIA.”

“Every time Bill’s mother sends us something new for the baby, I want to rip my hair out.” 

“She’s being so much more helpful than Dad, though,” Carrie points out. “He forgot that infants need special car seats.”

“Can’t you just agree with me?” Maggie grumbles.

“Yes, I’m sorry, Bill’s mom should definitely not be sending you free shit for Ruby. She’s such a monster.”

“I just keep getting madder and madder at Mom, that she chose to miss all of this. She could be mailing me baby books with entire chapters bookmarked and highlighted, like Bill’s mother. But she isn’t.” 

“That sounds annoying, actually.” 

Maggie sighs heavily. “It is really annoying. It’s like she’s giving me homework, but at least that means she cares.”

“You’d think Mom leaving with nothing but a note like in a bad movie would convince you forever that she doesn’t care.”

“How can you say that with a straight face? It’s like it means nothing to you.” 

“Of course I would rather have her around. But I can’t really blame her for leaving,” Carrie admits. It’s the first time she’s said that out loud. 

“Well, I can! It’s one thing to fantasize about being free of all your responsibilities, and another to leave your children without so much as a phone call.” 

“I know,” Carrie agrees, sensing that more input isn’t needed. Maggie’s getting fired up, and there’s nothing to do to stop her.

“I spent so much of my time as a teenager trying to play the mediator with Mom and Dad, like it was my responsibility to stop them from fighting.”

“You were a pretty good therapist,” Carrie jokes. “But you tried too hard.” 

“I tried _too_ hard? Like if I let Mom and Dad tear each other apart, maybe she’d be in this room right now?”

“No!”

“So enlighten me. Where did I go wrong?” Maggie’s voice is scarily calm.

“I just don’t think that when Mom pulled out of our driveway for the last time she was thinking, _I’m glad Maggie spent all her energy trying to stop the family from fighting.”_

“Oh, right, I forgot you’ve always had such an intimate knowledge of Mom’s inner thoughts. I was just trying to make everyone happy.”

“You were so anxious all the time about upsetting anyone. I don’t think it was worth it,” Carrie tries to say gently.

“So I was too considerate and drove Mom away? It wasn’t your drinking or Dad’s mental illness or a general apathy towards being a mother?”

“This is the dumbest argument we’ve ever had! You keep twisting yourself into knots just to keep fighting with me.”

“Sorry if I’m a little emotional after giving birth,” Maggie shoots back, not sorry at all. “Nothing is going the way I thought it would, Bill has been gone for like two hours, my entire body is falling apart, and you’re just sitting here telling me I did everything wrong as a teenager.” 

Carrie stands up, well aware that Maggie is just going to keep yelling. She’s pissed that her sister insisted on having Ruby in Philly instead of DC, so she has limited escape options. 

“You know, I can just leave, since I can tell I’m not wanted here,” she offers. 

That was a mistake; she can see the switch flip in Maggie’s brain from hurt to fury. 

“You’re just going to leave me all alone?” Maggie hisses.

“That seemed like what you wanted! You just yelled at me for a solid five minutes!”

“You are such a fucking cunt. You always want to tune out when things get hard.”

Carrie whirls around, looking for her purse, trying to stop the sobs building up in her chest. Their dad was counting on staying in Maggie’s apartment for the next few days, but Carrie is hoping she can make the next Amtrak train back to DC. 

“Well, you’re clearly familiar with the maternal guilt trip,” she says, the only response she can think of. “So it looks like you’re all set with Ruby. I have to go now.” 

Carrie finally locates her bag tossed on a shelf, the black leather out of place in the sea of pastel blue and yellow decorations. She tosses the strap over her shoulder and turns to leave, half-hoping Maggie will make her stay.

“Make sure you close the door,” Maggie commands. “I’m not getting up again.”

For a split second Carrie considers leaving the door ajar, but decides against it, pulling it closed with enough force to echo down the way-too-happy maternity ward. 

She runs into her dad in the hospital lobby, on his way up to Maggie’s room. He’s surprised to see her almost shaking with rage, but is able to calm her down enough that she stops her beeline for 30th Street Station. She walks the twenty minutes to Maggie’s apartment instead, hurt, guilty, and wishing she’d brought her running shoes.

Carrie and Maggie find a precarious peace the next day, urged on by their very confused father, but they both refuse to mention Ellen in a code of silence that lasts for years.

+++++

Summer 2014

Carrie finds Maggie outside on her front steps the evening before their father’s funeral, the evening after their mother shows up unannounced. Carrie is sorry she drove Ellen away, but she doesn’t deserve credit for trying to apologize for the first time in seventeen years, and driving away at the first sign of resistance. 

“I thought you hated her,” Carrie says as she sits down heavily next to Maggie. 

“I thought you didn’t.”

“Well, I never expected to hear from her again, let alone find her in your kitchen. I was surprised. She really didn’t call first?”

“I think she figured we would tell her not to come,” Maggie reasons.

“Well, she was right, so she could have saved herself a lot of driving.”

Maggie sighs. “You really don’t want to talk to her at all?”

“I didn’t actually expect her to turn around and drive home,” Carrie says, a little sheepish. “I thought she would try harder.”

“You wanted her to grovel.”

“Well, yeah. Didn’t you? She left us for seventeen fucking years, Maggie.” 

“I always pictured myself demanding a long apology, but I don’t know. I don’t feel angry, I feel hurt. When I opened the door and saw her there, it was like I got the wind knocked out of me.”

“I know what you mean.” Carrie pauses. “I met one of dad’s friends in the park earlier today. He seemed to know Franny well, and he knew I’d been away. It just really fucked me up, hearing that my daughter has a whole life without me. Then when I walked into the kitchen and saw Mom, I couldn’t take it. It was too much. I got furious all over again that she abandoned us.”

Maggie is quiet for a second, choosing her words carefully. “Isn’t that what you did with Franny?”

Carrie feels pressure building in her chest, making it harder to breathe. “No. No, that is not the same thing.”

“It’s not? You just said it yourself. She has a whole life without you.”

“I was always coming back. I was in touch, and I had reasons.” She sounds overly defensive even to her own ears.

“Don’t you want to find out what Mom’s reasons were?” 

“We know it was because she couldn’t handle Dad,” Carrie says darkly.

“Well, we don’t know that. Not for sure. We could have heard everything in Mom’s own words, except you made her leave.”

“Is this going to be another thing we fight about forever? If Mom left after one confrontation, she didn’t really want to be here. She didn’t care enough.”

“I guess you’re right,” Maggie admits.

Carrie stretches her legs down the steps of the porch, restless. 

“Do you think about her a lot?” Maggie asks, contemplative.

“I used to, right after Franny was born. I wondered what kind of grandmother she’d have been, and if she’d have volunteered to take care of Franny like Dad did. But then once I left for Kabul, I was in survival mode, and everything was different.” 

What Carrie doesn’t admit is how much she cried on the plane to Afghanistan, her thoughts a muddled, contradictory jumble: she was no better than Ellen for leaving, six weeks after giving birth; no, she had a real justification — she had to go serve her country, do the work she was born for; Franny was better off with Maggie anyway, who always had her shit together in the most laughably cookie-cutter suburban way. It’s true, she was in survival mode in Kabul, but that was mostly the result of a depressive haze that she could only fight off by thinking of nothing but work, all the time. 

“I had those same thoughts too, especially when Ruby was born. I would get so mad at Bill’s mother for no reason.”

“I do wish I got to hear Mom out,” Carrie says slowly.

“Well, great. You only came to that conclusion six hours too late.”

“I could go to Missouri.” Carrie feels some of the energy rush back that’d been missing since the embassy attack in Islamabad. She always feels better when she’s in motion.

“We don’t know where she lives. She didn’t even leave a phone number, remember?”

“Maggie, I work for the CIA. I can find her address if I want to.”

“Oh. Right.” Maggie doesn’t add what Carrie knows she’s thinking, which is, _Why didn’t you look for it earlier?_

“You want to come with me?”

Maggie sighs, her face conflicted. “I can’t just leave for a few days. I have patients, I have the girls.”

“You also have a husband, who can take care of Ruby and Josie. Your patients can wait until next week to see you. We’ll take Franny with us.”

“I don’t know,” Maggie says, considering the possibility.

“How can you not know? You were the one who wanted to hear what she had to say.” 

“I just —” Maggie starts. “I’m scared of going all the way to Missouri only to be upset with the truth. Sometimes I think we’re better off not knowing.” 

Maggie has always been good at self-preservation. Carrie has no interest. 

“How can the truth be worse than living with uncertainty all this time?” Carrie asks.

She will come to deeply regret that question.

So Carrie goes to Missouri alone, without Maggie, who just repeated that she would keep everything running smoothly at home, a convenient sidestep that Carrie didn’t have the energy to push her on. She wanted to bring Franny, at first, wanting to keep her close and maybe introduce her to her grandmother, but Maggie talked her out of it in her usual practical way: road trips and babies don’t mix. Carrie surrendered Franny with the thought that not bringing her would give Ellen more inducement to come back to DC sometime.

Once Carrie has the conversation with her mom that she’s been imagining for almost two decades, she’s glad she didn’t take Franny with her. Ellen said she left not because of her husband’s mental illness, or even because she was tired of being a parent, but because she didn’t want to be a mother to Carrie or Maggie. She had no problem creating a new family, starting with a pregnancy she claims was unplanned but that she must have been edging closer towards for years, statistically, with all her messy affairs. Being alone means she gets a chance to fall apart in peace.

Ellen’s son (she refuses to think of him as her brother) looked at her and through her when he answered the door to their house, no faint glimmer of recognition that showed he even knew she existed. There were no old family photographs of her or Maggie on the mantel, no thread of curiosity about his mother’s past life that he wanted to tug on, just a concern that he could be late for school, no inkling of who was standing on his doorstep.

Maggie keeps calling as Carrie speeds back towards Virginia, shaking with sobs on the empty midnight highway, hitting _ignore_ over and over again. She sends a text when she reaches the Indiana state border, _Be home by morning. I’ll fill you in on everything then._ She can’t form the sentences now, she’s too incoherent with fury and hurt, but of course Maggie was right: they were better off not knowing.

Carrie assumes everyone will be gone to school and work by the time she gets back, but Maggie is sitting on the couch holding Franny.

“Thank God, I was scared you’d flipped into a ditch on the side of the road,” she says to Carrie, relieved. “You can’t just ignore me all night like that. What happened?” 

“You’re not at work?” Carrie states the obvious while she sinks down onto the couch.

“My first two patients cancelled. I don’t have to be in for a couple hours.”

Franny holds her arms out to Carrie, babbling happily. Carrie scoops her up and kisses the top of her head repeatedly, trying to blink away her tears. Franny has just started to really recognize Carrie as her mother, a member of the family instead of the occasional visitor she was up until a couple weeks ago.

“Mom has another kid,” she says eventually, the only thing she can force out.

Maggie almost cracks a smile. “What the fuck are you talking about?” 

“I rang her doorbell and a teen boy answered. Almost seventeen years old, to be exact.” 

“I — I don’t even know what to say.”

“That was pretty much my reaction, too.”

“Is he nice? Did you introduce yourself? Did he even know about us?” Maggie asks in rapid succession, not pausing for the answers until she’s done thinking out loud.

“I don’t think he knows about us. About Mom’s past life. You’d think he would recognize the resemblance, but I just said I was a friend looking for Ellen.” 

“It’s probably for the best you didn’t ruin his life, too,” Maggie muses. 

Carrie chuckles humorlessly, a short burst of air, ruffling Franny’s hair. “Yeah. I guess so.” 

“So, wait. Back up,” Maggie commands. “Did Mom get remarried? When did she meet the father? Exactly how old is this son?”

Carrie feels the exhaustion from the drive hit her suddenly, and her eyelids feel so heavy. 

“Mom left because she was pregnant. She had a few affairs while we were growing up, some of which Dad knew about,” she recites robotically. 

Maggie pinches the skin between her eyebrows and takes a deep breath. “During all the hours I spent lying awake, imagining what you would have to report when you got home, I swear to God it wasn’t this.” 

“She told me everything like I should feel sorry for her. It was the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had. I don’t think she apologized once.”

“It’s not like an apology would do any good after so many years.”

“Do you have to be so reasonable?” Carrie groans. “Can’t we ever just be mad at Mom together? I think right now would be a perfect time for that. God knows she deserves it.”

“I always felt like Mom leaving was my biggest failure,” Maggie admits. 

Carrie opens her mouth to protest, but Maggie interrupts her before she can get a word out. 

“In the back of my head I knew that was stupid, and now it’s pretty obvious she just didn’t want to be a part of our family. But that’s what I thought.”

“Well, to me it always meant that people who were bipolar were impossible to love. And after I got diagnosed, it meant that people might leave me at any time, and they’d be justified for it.”

Maggie starts giggling wildly, making Franny jump at the sudden high-pitched sound. “Wow, Mom really fucked us up, didn’t she?” 

“You’re just realizing this now?”

“No, but it’s funny to hear it out loud. It makes it more real.”

“Sorry you have to go to work soon,” Carrie apologizes. “Maybe I should have waited to tell you.”

Maggie waves a hand at her. “Don’t worry. It won’t actually hit me for a few days.”

“I was really mad when I got in the car. Like, I couldn’t see straight. I was scared I wasn’t going to be able to drive. But I just feel numb now.” 

“I think that’s because you haven’t slept in twenty-four hours. Are you sorry you went?”

Carrie takes a moment to consider. “I don’t know. It was pretty fucked, but at least now we can have closure on both our parents.”

“I guess so. What terrible closure to have, though.” 

They both start laughing again at the same time, Carrie feeling delirious from exhaustion and her rage hangover.

“I need to go to sleep now,” Carrie says, rubbing her hands over her eyes.

Maggie checks her watch. “It’s almost time for Franny’s morning nap. Can you put her down first?” 

“Of course,” she nods, and then says to Franny, “Are you getting tired? I’m so tired, you wouldn’t even believe it.”

Franny answers her by shoving her fist in her mouth and cuddling into Carrie’s shoulder. 

“I think that’s a yes,” Maggie smiles. “I have to leave for work now, but I’m glad you’re home safe.” 

Maggie is almost out of the room when Carrie stops her. “You okay?” Carrie asks. 

“Yeah,” Maggie nods. “For now, anyway. I’m actually glad I chickened out and stayed here. I don’t know what I would have done if I had to sit there and listen to all that shit from Mom herself.”

“I wish I’d stayed here too. The only good thing to come out of this trip was that I finally solved the mystery of _why.”_

“But that wasn’t enough.”

“It certainly fucking wasn’t.”

As Maggie’s car pulls out of the driveway, Carrie heads upstairs with Franny. She doesn’t want to put her down quite yet, loves that she can hear the soft exhale as Franny’s breathing slows and she starts to fall asleep on her shoulder. She rubs Franny’s back in slow circles as she passes the nursery and walks into the guest room that’s hers for the time being. She lays Franny in the middle of her queen bed, builds a wall of pillows on one side to stop her from rolling off the mattress, and lays down on the other side, curling her body in a mirror image of Franny’s, a closing parenthesis. 

“I love you,” she whispers to her sleeping daughter. “So much more than I can ever tell you.”

When Franny reached for Carrie in the living room earlier, it was the first time she wanted to be with her over Maggie, the first time Carrie felt her primacy as a mother. Something crystallized for Carrie on her long, lonely drive home; she was devastated, yes, but a deeper protectiveness kicked in, too. She never wants Franny to feel as hurt and empty as she does right now, and she’ll do anything to prove that she’ll be a kinder, more forgiving mother than Ellen ever was. 

Maggie has told her on multiple occasions that the most important part of being a parent is showing up, a platitude that always used to ring hollow to Carrie, who just kept worrying that she wasn’t warm enough or organized enough. And she probably still won’t ever be as good a hostess as Maggie is, and won’t volunteer to coordinate PTA bake sales, but she’ll be there to show Franny that she’s trying, which Maggie has assured her is a perfect start.

After a few days of relative domestic peace, Carrie learns that Dar Adal talked Saul into a compromise with Haqqani and the Taliban. She’s horrified, of course, and betrayed, and wracked with guilt over everyone Haqqani killed at the embassy in Islamabad. But it’s her fault, for pushing too hard, for going to Dar’s house to tell him she caught him in Haqqani’s car, for thinking she was doing a good thing by burrowing deeper into another unfixable problem. She feels dizzy from a lack of oxygen, punched in the stomach one too many times.

Her life has been slowly crumbling around her for months, a sinister whisper in her ear reminding her that she brings destruction with her everywhere she goes. Her father is dead, her mother might as well be, and her mentor just fucked her over in the most egregious way possible. As if they weren’t crouching behind a blown-up car dodging machine gun fire from Haqqani’s men just two weeks ago, as if Haqqani didn’t kill embassy employees as a simple show of strength, a blood sport. 

The news about Saul’s betrayal is painful, but more importantly, it severs another one of the few remaining ties she has to DC. She can’t just sit around while everything is falling apart around her; she needs to stay active, vigilant. Maggie always said one of the most annoying things about her was that she couldn’t stay still, and at least that’s one thing that will never change. 

She asks around about private sector jobs, anywhere in the world. It’s the first time in her entire career she’s considered leaving public service, but there’s no other alternative that seems right. At first, the only openings seem to be for defense contractors, which isn’t at all what she’s looking for, but eventually, she gets an email that a German philanthropist is looking for a head of security for his foundation. He’s based in Berlin and works with Syrian refugees trying to claim asylum. 

After a few informal interviews, which he calls “chats,” Otto Düring offers her the job. She’s a little taken aback at how easy it was, but it’s the perfect situation: it’s not government, but is still public service, in a way; her relocation expenses will be covered; and children seem to be welcomed, based on Otto’s eager questions about Franny’s ten-month developmental milestones. She hopes her high school French will help her learn German. 

Maggie takes the news that she’s leaving surprisingly well, just nods quietly, like everything is going as she’d imagined. “I knew you wouldn’t stay here for long,” she says. 

“I just… I need to be somewhere else.” Carrie needs to justify herself, even though Maggie isn’t asking. “I need to build a life that’s just for me and Franny, without you there watching my every move and waiting to catch me if I fall.”

Maggie raises her eyebrows.

“Which I appreciate, of course,” Carrie adds. “But I need to commit to the promise I made when I decided to have Franny, and prove to myself that I can be a mother on my own.”

“We’ll all miss you.”

“You should come visit,” Carrie offers. “As soon as I get settled.” 

So she packs up her life and Franny’s and moves them across the Atlantic, where she’s determined to start fresh, just a mother and a daughter finding their way in a foreign country, a normal family free of damage.

+++++

Spring 2017

Carrie spends a lot of time comparing herself to her mother. When she’s not busy investigating David Wellington or Simone Martin, feverishly fast-forwarding through surveillance footage, falling asleep at her desk while taking notes and organizing her team, she lies awake and thinks about Ellen. 

She keeps wondering why she doesn’t feel guilty for not being more active with Franny, letting Maggie take over scheduling her playdates and letting Josie become her de facto babysitter. They’re happy to do so, at least for now; Carrie can tell immediately when Maggie’s lying or harboring resentment. Maggie likes being involved in Franny’s life, and they already have a routine in place from last spring when Carrie had to send her away from Berlin; they’re just falling back into it. Same preschool, same kiddie swim lessons at Maggie’s gym, same Friday night movies with Josie, who goes out with her friends afterwards.

Carrie tried her best at first, dropping Franny and Josie off at school every morning, making nice breakfasts for the family, even though she’s really a cereal person herself. But slowly, she found it harder and harder to resist the gravitational pull of a new mission: an undeniable murder, a chief of staff with clear motive, her old friend Dante there to fill in the gaps. 

The other (white, upper-class) working moms in her old neighborhood in Brooklyn used to complain constantly about how terrible they felt spending so much time away from home; they had high-powered jobs that demanded too much of them; if they could choose, they would stop working just to focus on their kids. They all had a guilt eating away at them that Carrie could never relate to, and still can’t. She loves Franny, it goes without saying, would lay down her life for her daughter’s if she ever had to. But she won’t give up her work, won’t give up herself, the pursuit of intelligence that the past two years taught her she needs in order to feel alive. She’s a loving mother, but she’s not a mother first, that’s the difference between her and seemingly everyone else in that infuriating Bed-Stuy Mamas text chain.

So Carrie doesn’t feel guilty, but she’s aware that she _should,_ remembers that Maggie used to worry about Ruby and Josie growing into anxious, rejection-sensitive adults because she was working too much. She uses Ellen as a measuring stick as the weeks fly by and Dante is arrested and she can’t be home as often. She would ever tell anyone, but the comparison brings her comfort: she may not be the perfect image of motherhood, but she’s still around, check, she doesn’t constantly compare Franny to Josie or Ruby, check, she’s not cold or judgemental or withholding, check.

Her sense of superiority collapses when Maggie files for custody of Franny. She keeps reminding herself that she can justify her absences, that she’s doing important work, but ultimately she knows her excuses won’t mean anything to her three-and-a-half-year old, who just wants her mother to tuck her in at night and be there when she wakes up in the morning.

Carrie used to think that Ellen left because she, too, wasn’t a mother first, though she wouldn’t have been able to articulate it in those exact words. She thought Ellen wanted something different out of her life, but meeting her half-brother in Missouri clarified that she was dead wrong on that count. She never wants Franny to feel that same pointed hurt, to go through the same realization that her mother wanted to leave her, specifically. 

One of the reasons why she brings the custody case to court is because for so long a settlement feels like giving up, like an admission of guilt, that she doesn’t even care enough about Franny to fight for her. Carrie still feels the echoes of Ellen leaving without a word, melting away completely, and remembers lying in her dorm room in the months afterwards calculating ways to hold everyone in her life at arm’s length. She doesn’t want that for Franny, even though she can admit by now that she can’t give herself fully to both her daughter and her country, that Franny deserves a more stable life than what she can offer. She’s holding on by her fingernails to prove a point.

But she knows what’s best for Franny, ultimately, and she feels a rare moment of peace when she signs the agreement to hand custody over to Maggie.

Maggie finds her at the house after the hearing is over, after she tells Saul she can come to Russia after all. There’s a strange de-escalation of tension wrapped up in the cold hard fact that Maggie has more to offer Franny, including the house where almost all of Carrie’s clothes and belongings remain.

“Can I come in?” Maggie asks, hovering at the half-ajar door of the guest bedroom that was converted in Carrie’s room. 

“Of course.” 

Maggie leans against the door jamb, just inside the room, as Carrie sits cross-legged on the bed.

“That was a great speech you gave at the hearing,” Carrie starts. “About me waving at planes.” 

Maggie laughs a little. “Do you remember doing that?”

“Yeah. And I remember the first time we actually went on a plane I tried to look for people on the ground. Even after I realized how high up we were, I still kept looking.”

“Well,” Maggie nods awkwardly, with nothing else to add. “I think everything went as smoothly as it could have today.”

A couple weeks ago, Carrie would have argued about what Maggie meant by _smoothly;_ smoothly for whom, exactly? But she’s too tired now to split hairs when she knows what Maggie means. It could have been a lot uglier, as the medical files in Carrie’s bag prove. 

“I’m going to miss Franny,” Carrie whispers. “So much. I need you to know that.” 

“I do. Of course I do. But I think it’s more important that she knows that.” 

“Yeah. I need to figure out how I can make her understand.” Carrie sits for a second, picking at a stray thread in her quilt. “Do you think Mom missed us after she left?” 

Ellen has been on her mind for days as she keeps insisting, internally, that she’s not abandoning Franny. She keeps thinking about how it looks on paper — mother with important job doesn’t have time for her kid; sister has to wrestle the kid away in a legal battle — and wonders if the lawyers take sides in their own heads. She wonders where she ranks on the unfit mother scale, if these lawyers, who have seen it all, would agree that Ellen is more at fault than she is. In the scheme of things, her case was short, was not sad, and was settled amicably, so it probably won’t even register in a year or two. Carrie thinks that actually makes everything worse: the most painful, demeaning event in her life being deemed unremarkable, a best-case scenario, even. 

“She must have missed us,” Maggie responds, but without much conviction. They have no evidence to support that.

“Sometimes I forget what life was really like when she was around,” Carrie says quietly. “If we actually did fight all the time, or if that’s just how my brain wants to remember things, because it’s easier that way.”

“There were a lot of good times, too. All those summers up at the cabin? We were so happy.” 

“I just don’t want Franny to remember me off my meds, dragging her to a strange man’s house that the FBI raided in the middle of the night.” 

“Why are you acting like you’re never going to see her again?” Maggie asks cautiously.

“You know that I was never going to get an apartment of my own in DC and sit there quietly until it was time to see Franny every two weeks. If that were the plan, I wouldn’t have had to sign away custody at all. I wouldn’t be considered a flight risk.” 

Carrie has been thinking carefully about this for days, ever since Saul pitched the mission to exfiltrate Simone. When he first came to her, she couldn’t handle the distraction. But now she needs the whole messy custody fight to mean something; if she’s not fit to take care of her daughter, she has to double down on the mission that made it clear she couldn’t fully give herself to being both a mother and an intelligence officer at the same time.

“I need to go away for a few days, with Saul. But I’m not leaving forever,” Carrie adds hastily. “I would never do that. I’ve never even thought about doing that.” Maybe if she keeps saying it loudly enough, she can cancel out the gnawing sadness she still feels. 

Maggie closes her eyes, resigned. “Where are you going this time?”

“I can’t tell you that.” 

“Of course not.”

“But it’s a very important mission,” Carrie says firmly.

“That’s what you say every time!”

“That’s because everything I do is important.” Carrie fights to keep her voice level, knowing how absurd she sounds on the surface. But she desperately wants to make Maggie understand why the CIA keeps seeking her out and why she keeps getting pulled back in: even through her missteps, she’s really good at her job. “I know it sounds crazy, and I know you’re used to hearing it. But this trip could literally impact the future of our democracy.” 

Maggie smiles sadly, her face softening. “I knew you wouldn’t stay put for long. You never do. But I didn’t think you’d leave so quickly.” 

“Please tell me you understand why I’m doing this.”

“I understand that _someone_ has to protect the future of our democracy, and I understand that all the personality traits you have that I don’t make you the perfect person to do it. I have no idea what that feels like, but I don’t blame you for going.”

Carrie takes a deep breath. That’s as close as she’ll ever get to acceptance from her sister, whose entire adult life has been built on the consistency she lacks. 

“That’s good enough for me,” she nods. “Now, can you help me break the news to Franny?”

Franny is disappointed to see her go, but even at three years old she doesn’t seem surprised, and that’s what has Carrie gasping through sobs as she packs her suitcase. After many long hugs goodbye, she takes a cab to the airfield where Saul and her crew are waiting, wanting the alone time to pull herself together. 

“I’m going to be back so soon,” she’d promised Franny through tears, trying not to think about the fact that she’d offered herself up as a sacrifice for the mission’s Plan B, because if she couldn’t be all in as a mother, she could at least give her entire self for her country.


End file.
